Melanie Martin
Introduction My name is Melanie Jean Martin. I was born May 8, 1993 in Corona, California where I spent the first 18 years of my life. I graduated from Eleanor Roosevelt High School in 2011. After graduation I moved to Norman to attend the University of Oklahoma. Four months after I moved to Oklahoma to begin school, my dad’s job was relocated to Oklahoma City and my family moved from our home in California to Edmond. I am currently majoring in advertising with a minor in communication. I will graduate in May 2015 and hope to work in the creative department of an advertising agency. I come from a very small family with my mom being an only child and my dad with only one sibling. Immediate Family I was born to Jamie and Paul Martin. My mom, Jamie, earned her degree from the University of Southern California and worked at Costco’s buying office until I was born and she became a stay-at-home mom. She married my dad before she graduated at age 22 and had me when she was 28 years old. My dad graduated from the University of California at Irvine with a degree in Computer Science. He earned his masters degree from the University of Southern California while working full-time as an engineer at Boeing Company, where he has now worked for over 25 years. I am the eldest of their two children. My brother’s name is Greg Lyle Martin and he was born on August 17, 1996. He is graduating from Santa Fe High School in May 2014. He will be beginning his first semester of college at the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 2014 where he will be double majoring in accounting and finance. Family History My mom’s maiden name was Jamie Jean Jamieson. She was born to Lyle and Nancy Jamieson on March 29, 1965 in West Covina, California. Lyle was born in Alberta, Canada and as an adult he decided to gain United States citizenship and live in California where he worked as treasurer at the University of Southern California. Nancy was born in Vermont and later moved to New York City to work for a marketing firm before moving to California. After moving to California she went to nursing school and worked as a psychiatric nurse until her first and only child was born and she decided to become a stay-at-home mother. My dad’s full name is Paul Lewis Martin. He was born in Columbus, Ohio to Ernest and Donna Martin on February 5, 1964. Ernest graduated from Penn State University and Donna graduated from Ohio State University. Donna worked as a teacher until her eldest child, my father, was born. Ernest worked for Rockwell (currently Boeing) as an engineer and it was a job relocation that led to the Martin family moving from Columbus, Ohio to Yorba Linda, California. Culture and Beliefs The roots of my ancestors, back five generations, lie in England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Scotland, Whales, and Germany. My family has centered our lives around our traditional Christian values. My grandparents have emphasized the importance of practicing Christianity while raising my parents. They were both baptized and attended church regularly growing up. My parents decided that they would raise my brother and I as non-denominational Christians and we began attending New Life Community church in our hometown. When we moved to Edmond it was a priority of ours to find a church where we feel welcome. We now attend Life Church in Edmond. We celebrate the major Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter, and my parents made sure we know that the true meaning of the holidays is much deeper than Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. My mom celebrates her Irish heritage by making the family a traditional Irish meal of corned beef and cabbage when we celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. She is also in the process of planning a family vacation to Ireland to explore the homeland of our ancestors and to better understand the culture. Gender Roles The importance of achieving a college education has been stressed in my family, for both the men and women, for generations. While all of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and parents have earned college degrees, gender roles have still had a major impact on how the members of my family have decided to live their lives. Even with a degree from the University of Southern California, my mom decided to quit her job and become a stay-at-home mom when I was born. Both of my grandmothers also chose to stay at home when my parents were born. My brother’s sister, Lori Cunningham, also decided to stay home and quit her marketing job with Nestle to take care of my two cousins, Kayla and Coleson, while my Uncle Thomas works for his family business in insurance. The men of the family have always been the providers of the family as the women have taken on the domestic roles. One member of my family who challenged society’s gender roles was my great-great grandmother on my mom’s side, Alice Jamieson who lived in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In December 1916 Alice was the first woman to be appointed to any judiciary in the British Empire. Her appointment as police magistrate to Calgary’s Women’s Court brought hostility from male lawyers, judges, and police because at that time women were not legally considered people in Alberta. The protest of her ability to make binding decisions as a judge went to the Supreme Court of Alberta where the judges upheld her right to hold office, ruling that women were persons. Alice was a women’s activist who worked to improve conditions for women and children. She was the president the Local Council of Women, a group that was one of the forces responsible for gaining women suffrage in Alberta in 1916. Race My immediate family has spent the majority of their lives in southern California surrounded by diversity. At my high school I was the minority. In the neighborhoods we have lived in we had neighbors of various ethnicities and we had the opportunity to learn about different cultures through neighborhood gatherings and dinner parties. Living in such a diverse part of the country we never thought of race as a factor in who we associated with. I grew up with friends of different ethnicities and never thought much of it until I was in high school and starting dating a boy who was half white and half Mexican and my grandma, who grew up in a different time and a different region of the United States, expressed her distaste towards me dating someone who was not fully Caucasian. My other grandmother was much more accepting of people of different ethnicities being that she spent much of her life living in large cities and interacting with people who are of a different culture than her own. Summary This assignment has shown me that my family is the typical white, Christian, middle class family and they adhere to societal expectations in terms of gender roles and class. The importance my family has placed on higher education, belonging to the upper middle class, and the fact that every member of my family, for three generations, has earned a college degree has had a large influence on my decision to obtain a college education. I love my family and hearing their stories, the events that lead me to become the person that I am today, influencing my thoughts, beliefs, and how I view my role in society as a white woman.